Poetry & Performance

Teachers Notes

How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix by Robert Browning Overview In this activity students of key stage 4 and above will write a poem to express movement, inspired by the form, rhythmic pattern and pace of Brownings verse and using alliteration, full rhyme and rhyming couplets.

Introduction The poetic form of Brownings poem is anapaest, using three syllables: short-short long; or two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm of the poem gathers momentum as it recalls the horses canter (actually, the hose would be moving at a gallop, faster than the pace of the poem perhaps suggests).

Task Who is the real hero of this poem? It is Roland, the horse. In this poem, against all odds, an animal saves the day.

Write a poem in which you are the narrator, telling of a race against time, hurrying to deliver something: vital news? a message perhaps, or a parcel? You are with an animal, which can be any creature of your choice you could be accompanied by a much smaller pet than a horse. Where are you going? Who or what are you trying to reach? Describe your journey, using rhythm and words to suit the movement of your animal.

a) Decide what it is you are delivering and whether you will keep this a secret from your reader like Browning. b) What animal do you have with you and why? c) Decide whose perspective you are writing from yours or the animals? c) think carefully about the animal you are with and decide how the two of you are moving. Are you running, riding or flying? List some adjectives that describe how you are moving and like Browning try and use some alliteration e.g. soaring steeply. d) Think about the form and rhythm of your poem can this also reflect the pace of you and your animal e.g. should it slither slowly like a snake?

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Poetry & Performance

Teachers Notes

My Last Duchess by Robert Browning

Overview My Last Duchess by Robert Browning is a well-known dramatic monologue, spoken by a Duke. In this activity students are asked to write a response to this poem from the womans viewpoint.

Introduction This dramatic monologue, spoken by the Duke, is apparently based on true events concerning Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, whose first wife died at a very young age. In the poem the Duke, who reveals himself to be a proud and possessive man, speaks about his wife, who now deceased and immortalised in a portrait he can completely control. Written during the Victorian period, the poem reflects nineteenth century attitudes to womens sexuality and it becomes clear that the Duchess has been murdered for her natural friendly flirtatiousness.

The poem employs enjambment: phrases and sentences that do not necessarily end at the end of a line, but are carried over to the next. This creates a more naturalistic speech pattern.

Task

a) Write down a list of words to describe the Duke b) Now write down a list that might describe the Duchess how are they different from each other. How do you think her attitude differed from that of her husband? c) Think of a title that shows you are writing from the Duchesss not the Dukes perspective. d) Construct your poem and use some enjambement (carrying the sentences over to the next line), so that it sounds quite conversational. Like the Duke in Brownings poem you may want to imagine that the Duchess is talking to someone else about her marriage. What might she say? How might she describe her husband?

Alternatively, write a poem from the point of view of the man whom the Duke is addressing. He is an emissary (representative) of the Count, who is waiting downstairs as the potential next father in law to the Duke (as you can see from the last eight lines of the poem). Again, give your poem a title and try to use rhyming iambic pentameter with enjambment (carrying the sentences over to the next line).

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Poetry & Performance

Teachers Notes

Prospice by Robert Browning Overview This activity will ask the students to employ all their senses. By guiding them through a series of exercises you will help them assemble a wide vocabulary which they will then use to write a poem with textured language that makes interesting and imaginative leaps of thought.

Introduction Robert Brownings Prospice was written shortly after his wife died and the poem looks forward (the literal translation of Prospice) to his own death and the moment when he will be with her again.

Task Read the poem aloud in class and talk through how Browning describes the process of dying and death itself. Is this something he has experienced for himself or imagined? How does he make it feel so real? Ask the students to take the emotional temperature of the poem: do they feel the poem is hot or cold / quiet or loud / dull or bright? One of the ways that Browning deepens the poem is by bringing many of our senses into play: the reader hears the fiendvoices, feels the pain, thinks about having eyes bandaged; is told that Browning wants to taste the whole of it.

The students are then going to do a series of exercises to make them aware of their senses. As a response to each, they should try to write down eight to ten words, so that they end up with plenty of material for their poems.

Touch Ask all the students to close their eyes. Give them an object from the object bag (see below) and ask them to touch it and think about how it feels. Now ask them to open their eyes and write down as many words as they can to describe what the object felt like.

Sight Now ask them to look really closely and carefully at their object and write as many words or phrases describing what they see as possible. Ask them for minute detail, not generalisations.

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Poetry & Performance

Teachers Notes

Hear Ask all the students to spend one minute in absolute silence. When theyre not talking it helps them to listen. Ask them to write down all the things they hear eg. footsteps, rustling paper, the chink of keys etc.

Smell Ask them to imagine they are walking into a train station concourse. What do they smell?

Taste Ask them to imagine they are eating their favourite food. What does it taste like? Write down as many words as possible to describe the texture and sensations in their mouth. Repeat, asking them to imagine eating their least favourite food.

Now ask the students to look at everything theyve written down and circle the ten or twelve most interesting words or phrases. They should then write a short poem, describing a place they have never visited or seen.

After reading them aloud, discuss what it was like creating a poem led by language where the vocabulary came before the subject. How did that affect their writing process?

Resources

A bag (or bags depending on number of students in group) containing:

An empty plastic water bottle A stone / rock A feather A scarf or piece of cloth A book A CD or DVD (one that you have no intention of playing again and dont mind getting scratched)

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